Google Currently Looking Into New Nexus 7 GPS Issue, Appears to be Widespread

According to users on several forums and across the web, the new Nexus 7 is currently experiencing GPS issues. From what people are reporting, the tablet will lock on to GPS, then all of a sudden drop signal and never return. Sometimes it will work for 30+ minutes, while other times it can only lock onto a satellite signal for a couple of minutes. After plenty of factory resets and checking their settings, users are going straight to Google for answers.

At least one Google employee has acknowledged the issue and that a team of engineers are currently looking into what is causing the issue. Once the issue is found, then they can take the steps to fix it. Could it be hardware related? Software? For those who owned a Transformer Prime from ASUS, let us hope the issue is software and not hardware. If you recall, ASUS personally sent out GPS dongles to everyone who complained about a lack of signal, and for those who don’t know, ASUS does in fact make the new Nexus 7. Could it be some sort of weird repeated issue?

We will have to wait for an official word from either ASUS or Google on what the deal is and what they plan on doing to resolve it. Does your Nexus 7 have this issue when trying to lock onto GPS?

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Dan

About month ago, upon the release of the new Nexus 7 I ordered one directly from Google. The WIRELESS Failed to connect and would do the exact same as reported about the GPS (I also am cursed with ownership of a Transformer Prime). I sent the unit back to GOOGLE and it took them a month to refund my money. Now I went to Radio Shack to purchase a new Nexus 7 and it does the exact same thing. Asus brings to mind a lot of adjectives that I normally don’t use in public

josh

Google should’ve never messed with Asus… Boy, are they going to regret it… 😛
Asus has absolutely NO Quality Assurance. It might work, and then it’s usually an amazing product or it might not, and it’s a consumer nightmare… Well, I had my share of Asus issues some years ago with a laptop. Once bitten… Twice shy. And no, GPS dongle is not an answer, I would demand either a fully working tablet as it should be, or my money back so I can add some more and buy a properly tested and working iPad mini… Or a less performant but so far very reliable Samsung galaxy tab 7″

gfacekilla01

Why am I not surprised? My OG Nexus 7 continues to be the worst POS I have ever owned. And it now appears to have died due to unknown causes. Won’t take a charge or boot. I guess the update finally killed it. A truly trashy product, despite all the claims of its greatness.

Steve B

Most likely your battery died and the tablet shut itself down.

What you need to do is plug it into the charger, then boot directly into the bootloader (vol up + vol down + power). Once there, select the option to power off the device. Once it powers down, wait 5 minutes then power on the device like normal and let it charge to 100%.

Sorry to resurrect an old topic 🙂

Kane Desousa

Can’t believe no one is mentioning the erratic multitouch problems. I’ve had 4 of these so far and they’ve all had this issue… there’s a thread on the Google forums and xda… Over 500 posts combined.

chris420o

That sucks….my og nexus7 works wonderfully with no gps or touch screen issues 🙂

trophynuts

lmao Junk parts strikes again…the main reason i’ve held off on buying one. Because i wanted to see if reports like this start popping up.

Sharkh20

I haven’t had any problems with mine. Got it from the Play Store. Sorry for everyone who is having problems though, hopefully there is a solution soon.

SundanceBear

Returned my newly Nexus 7 today – couldn’t take the risk that the problem was hardware with no commitment to fix. Will rebuy probably when I hear they have solved it.

mrfooter

I’m one of the 2013 Nexus 7 owners who is having the GPS problem. If you’d like to test yours it can seem to work but if you run two apps that use GPS (in my case Maps and Endomondo) and either drive or at least walk outside of your wifi signal it will drop and just keep searching. Dropping GPS can occur anywhere from a couple of minutes up to about an hour after initial lock.

Mine also has an erratic touch screen where I get multiple hits on the keyboard when typing as in “thiiiiiiiis succccks”. It also shows up on occasion during pinch to zoom. I’ll be returning it to Best Buy today as per Google Support who had me do a factory reset which didn’t help then tried to wipe the cache partition with no luck. Each of these remedies seemed to fix it for a short time but sure enough it eventually lost the signal and then just kept searching.

John Nguyen

Yes, my 2013 Nexus 7 have the issue when trying to lock onto GPS and I bought it the first weekend it was available from Staples. My two weeks is coming up tomorrow so I will return it my device and wait until Google fixes the problem. I am someone who uses this device to replace my Garmin so yes, the GPS is important to me.

GTIguy

Did you cache the map area that you want to navigate? I didn’t think the navigation worked without a network connection unless you have the maps cached. Your stand alone GPS (Garmin) has all the maps installed locally. Unless you have it tethered to your phone or get the LTE version I don’t think this can replace the Garmin.

John Nguyen

Yes, I did cache the map. It can’t pickup my current location let alone guide me. Basically it can’t get a lock onto a satellite.

Sounds more like faulty software! If it was hardware you would think that it would just never connect to a signal in the first place!

flosserelli

Not necessarily true. My Captivate had GPS issues that were hardware related. It would take forever to “lock” and when it finally did, it would lose the lock pretty quickly. Repeat ad nauseum. Stevie Wonder swinging at a piñata had a better sense of direction than my Captivate.

hoosiercub88

Don’t even bring up GPS issues with the original Galaxy S phones, that was a hardware issue.

flosserelli

Ummm…I just said that.

Jonathan Williams

I always laugh when I hear the word ‘dongle’…

Pedro

Are you Beavis or Butthead?
He said.. ‘dongle… heheh’
🙂

Flyinion

I’m going with software issues on this one. I got one on the early launch day (7-26) from a Best Buy that had their stock for at least a day (because they were ready to sell on 7-26). Not only would it not install the 2nd of two updates that were immediately available, but that publicized wallpaper (in the screenshot above) was missing and GPS wouldn’t even give you the icon in the status bar that it was trying to even connect.

Many others on XDA reported the same problem and it turned out these units all seemed to be from Best Buy. Returned it for another one from a different store that I know had newer stock (still unpacking their truck on the 26th) and it’s had no problems. I’m assuming that 2nd update had some kind of GPS fix and maybe Google doesn’t have it totally fixed yet. I did notice I had to reboot the other day to get a lock but it did lock again just fine.

Gnex

I have an iPad mini, and I’m going to buy an iPad mini

Sharkh20

But we should get a nexus 7?

DainLaguna

stop. just stop.

The Werewolf

Aren’t you special.

Gnex

yes.

Sectime

Do you need two?

Kane Desousa

No gps issues here but I have been having multitouch problems with like pinch to zoom and nearly everything else I exchanged it 3 times and all had the same problem. 16gb and 32gb a lot of people on XDA and Google forums report the same issues yes No ONE from Google has said anything about it. Happens mostly when unplugged and on the same axis when using multitouch

J. Gilbertson

Introducing the next Nexus accessory: The Nexus GPS dongle. For all your GPS woes. Availability will be around the same length of time as the first Nexus 7 dock. /s

Bill Hill

GPS Status & Toolbox, took little longer then norm but fixed it

DJ SPY

I think Google hit its peak with ICS and Jellybean 4.1. 4.2 and 4.3 went back to the old days of bug filled Android.

DainLaguna

nah bruh. 4.3 has been a godsend.

if it was software related, gpe editions of the s4 and htc one would be having this problem too. they arent.

i’ve seen the multi-touch issue…and now this? asus’s qc is more likely to blame.

Keith0606

not having any weird issues of any kind so far but i haven’t used my gps for much or for any real long length of time. My guess is this issue is software. If it were hardware I’d think it wouldn’t work properly for any length of time.

Adrynalyne

Happy to say I haven’t had any issues at all.
No light bleed.
No GPS issue.
No speaker crackling.
No random reboots.
My bad luck may have finally come to an end.

Paul Hansen

As you jinx yourself 😛

Adrynalyne

Don’t say that! 🙁

michael arazan

My original Nexus 7 screen keeps flashing ever since I have installed 4.3, mostly when I’m using chrome browser

Jeremy Miller

in developer setting try checking the box “disable HW Overlays” sounds like that issue but i couldn’t be certain

Adrynalyne

Actually, that will disable the “butter”. “Show GPU view updates” and “Show screen updates” are what I would check.

nah…got two of the first batch, no problems…and my car too, no problems 🙂

hoosiercub88

Exactly, my mom’s launch 8GB N7 is still just fine.

hkklife

I had only used GPS once prior to this news becoming widespread yesterday but I have now been testing it often and it seems pretty substantial.

I’m also having occasionally crackly speakers and a few multitouch issues but I am hoping that those can be ironed out via software. If not, I am still thankfully within my return window. I REALLY thought with a year+ of Nexus 7 1st gen experience under their belt this 2nd gen would be free of early adopter defects (not to mention the price hike compared to what the 1st gen had been selling for). That, plus JBQ leaving AOSP due to Qualcomm, it quickly tarnishing what could have been the best small tablet on the market.

P.S. This is especially iironic because I had an early batch 16GB N7 plus a later run 32GB and both of those were flawless!

LionStone

My GPS is fine too…barring this bug, for all that the tablet is and the killer price point, I do believe it is the best small tablet on the market right now.

zorak19620

I swear, Asus cannot get their wireless hardware to work. I’ve had a wireless router by Asus and had nothing but connectivity problems, and my OG tranformer had horrible connectivity issues as well. They are always so close to making amazing products, but it seems they always have a tragic flaw.

My Asus wireless router (RT-N16) works perfectly, and has tons of features. I love being able to access an external hard drive over the internet using DNS names, using my phones USB tethering to act as a primary/secondary WAN connection, streaming using their Android app from my attached hard drive, and so much more.

Mike

I have one of the AC routers that Asus just released and have had absolutely no problems with it since day one.

zorak19620

I’ve had to replace my RT-N56U twice….On paper it has great features, it just drops signal and wouldn’t work for more than 30 minutes. I guess I had bad luck with mine. :-/

James_75

GPS seems to kick Asus’ ass. Maybe it’s a software problem this time.

hoosiercub88

Considering the new N7 isn’t made out of metal, I’m sure hoping so. It’s the only thing that’s keeping me from loving the tablet.

Cory_S

The issue with the Prime was that full metal jacket (black) it didn’t have any radio windows.

Ryan Stewart

Word. It was pretty clear why the GPS and WiFi sucked on that tablet.

Tyler Durden

Here comes the poor QC

The Werewolf

Yes and no. The issue with the Prime was that the design was faulty in an amateurish way, no one caught the error, it made it to production.. AND past ASUS’ QA to the customer – and then once recognized, ASUS tried to fix it with a software fix (that parallel is what worries most Prime owners), then tried to deny that the GPS was intended to be used as.. you know – a GPS, then they ‘fixed’ the problem by removing the reference to the Primes having a GPS from the box and finally sent the Prime owners a really hacky clip on GPS – then shipped the Infinity a few months later with the GPS somewhat fixed (although some owners had GPS problems on that as well) and upping the screen to HD resolution *at the same price as the Prime*.
So not surprisingly, we’re a little skittish when another ASUS built device suddenly starts down the same path.
It may turn out that it’s just a software issue – but I’m struck by the fact that again, this isn’t an isolated problem – a LOT of Nexus 7 2013 owners are having it. Which means another fairly significant ASUS GPS defect made it to the shelves.
You’d think by now that ASUS would test the hell out of the GPS first – just to avoid a repeat performance…

Bigsike

I always find it ironic how people complain about the build materials (plastics) and when you get an awesome built device like the Prime was you run into a whole other bunch of issues. The message is you usually can’t have it both ways, there is going to be some give and take even if it’s not obvious.

Cory_S

More of a common sense irony than anything else. Radio signals don’t penetrate metal well… you’d think a hardware manufacture of radio devices would now that.

Metal can obviously work fine in radio devices of engineered properly. I have heard of no issues with the HTC One. But, they need to have a “peep hole”. The Prime had nothing at all…which is why WiFi sucked so bad on it too…it could only see through the front of the device.

JoshGroff

ASUS having a GPS problem? No way!

– An ex tf201 owner (The GPS wasn’t the reason, the N7 2012 was)

Tay

Only problem I’m having is reboot issues.

HowDoIShotWeb

Mine has had this issue from day one. Google now is flaky because of it and I don’t have any WiFi where I live.